While startups have come up with new ways to find times for people to hold meetings, Facebook has cooked up a system of its own.

Facebook in 2013 submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office an application for a patent called “System and methods for scheduling a meeting.” Today the patent was formally published.

The patent application includes an interesting concept called scoring to identify ideal meeting times and places. And of course, once the meeting organizer has determined the best possible time and place for the meeting, the system can send out calendar invitations.

The technology could have some major implications. It could help Facebook employees plan their meetings efficiently. But it could also become a part of the Facebook experience that hundreds of millions of people use.

And Facebook seems to get that its tool could be useful outside of Facebook. Patent authors John David Egan, Scott MacVicar, and Eric Sumner state:

Calendaring systems may be especially useful for organizations. Organizations can include businesses, schools, non-profits, and other entities. An organization often requires meetings among its members to conduct important business or otherwise advance its objectives through collaboration. However, despite the use of calendaring systems, the ability to schedule and conduct meetings is often complicated by the size and complexity of the organization.

Depending on how widely the system is implemented — if it is ever implemented — it could pose a challenge to existing calendar services, including Google Calendar. Indeed, Facebook has thought about how to make it accessible to lots of people. Potential data sources “may include Microsoft Outlook with Exchange Server or other calendar tool, for instance,” the patent authors wrote.

Facebook didn’t immediately respond to VentureBeat’s request for comment on the patent application.

The system from Facebook takes into consideration where exactly people have to go for an in-person meeting and how long it will take to get there. And “a social networking system” — like Facebook, for example — could be integrated, such that people on the social networks can share their calendars and schedule meetings.

The system looks at people’s statuses — like the dreaded out-of-office (OOF) — to see if meeting times would be convenient. It checks to see whether people are free five minutes before a given meeting time, which presumably means it’s aware of any back-to-back meetings, which can cause people to be late. The system also takes into consideration if people are free five minutes after the meeting. It could rule out rooms that might be too small for a proposed meeting. If proposed meetings fall on weekends or holidays, or before or after certain times, the system can change its score.

It could even acknowledge meeting participants’ tendencies — like “whether an attendee tends to miss or attend meetings on specific days or times in the day,” as the patent authors put it.

Oh, and yes, it’s mobile-friendly.

Here are some more images from the patent application:

Above: From the Facebook patent application entitled “Systems and methods for scheduling a meeting.”

Image Credit: Screen shot

Above: From the Facebook patent application entitled “Systems and methods for scheduling a meeting.”

]]>0Facebook is patenting a tool that could change the way you schedule meetings4 tips for scheduling efficient meetings in 30 minutes or lesshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/01/28/4-tips-for-scheduling-efficient-meetings-in-30-minutes-or-less/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/28/4-tips-for-scheduling-efficient-meetings-in-30-minutes-or-less/#commentsThu, 29 Jan 2015 04:02:24 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?post_type=vb_syndicated&p=1650158If you schedule a meeting for an hour, it’s remarkable to me how often it takes an hour, even when it doesn’t need to.
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Have you ever finished something and thought to yourself, “That didn’t need to take an hour?”

In my world, I have an endless stream of requests to do something for an hour. I just looked at my calendar for the next two weeks and almost everything that someone else scheduled and invited me to is for an hour.

In contrast, all of the things I (or my assistant) have scheduled are for 30 minutes. And many of them will take five minutes.

If you schedule a meeting for an hour, it’s remarkable to me how often it takes an hour, even when it doesn’t need to. Three-hour board meetings, especially when board members have traveled to them, take — wait for the drum roll — three hours.

Above: Brad Feld’s busy life.

Image Credit: Brad Feld

During the day, between Monday and Friday, I generally have a very scheduled life. I go through phases where I shift into Maker Mode, now no longer schedule anything before 11am my time (with occasional exceptions), and try to have a very unscheduled weekend. But Monday to Friday looks like the image to the right.

Over time, I’ve come up with some approaches to deal with this massively over-scheduled life in order to stay sane. Here are a few of them.

30 minute schedule slots: I’ve tried it all. 60 minutes. 15 minutes. 5 minutes. 45 minutes. 37 minutes. The only thing that I’ve found that works is 30 minutes. If I schedule for 15 minutes, I inevitably have too many things in a day and get completely exhausted. If I schedule for more than 30 minutes, I find myself twiddling my thumbs and trying to get finished with the meeting. 30 minutes seems to be the ideal amount to get any type of meeting done.

A walk: If I have a longer, more thoughtful discussion I want to have with someone, I go for a walk. I have four routes around downtown Boulder – 15, 30, 45, and 60 minute walks. All of these walks have the same loop so even when I schedule for a 60 minute walk, I have an easy way to turn it into a 30 minute walk if it’s clear that’s all it’s going to take. Or, if I’m into the first 15 minutes and realize it needs to be an hour, I just extend to the 30 minute segment. My worst case on a walk that goes too long is that I get some steps for my daily Fitbit habit.

Phone calls: I schedule almost all phone calls, except for ones with high priority people. This high priority ones interrupt whatever I’m doing or get done on a drive to and from the office. If you hang around me, you’ll see that my phone rarely rings (except for Amy) and I rarely make calls outbound as most of my world runs on email or real-time messaging.

End everything early: I try to end everything when it’s done. I jump right in and finish when we are finished. When you give things 30 minutes, you don’t have time to futz around with intros and catch ups. When someone starts this way, I break in and say as politely as I can, “What’s on your mind?” On the phone, I minimize chit chat and just try to get to the point. And, after five minutes when we are done, I revel in the notion that I’ve got 25 minutes to do whatever I want.

I’m always experimenting with new things. What do you do to keep meetings manageable and sane?

]]>04 tips for scheduling efficient meetings in 30 minutes or lessThis telepresence robot is missing legs and wheels — on purposehttp://venturebeat.com/2014/01/28/this-telepresence-robot-is-missing-legs-and-wheels-on-purpose/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/28/this-telepresence-robot-is-missing-legs-and-wheels-on-purpose/#commentsTue, 28 Jan 2014 20:12:03 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=888102Take a robot. Chop off its head, discard the body, give it an extra-long neck, and stick an iPad where its face was. Voilà: Now you have a Kubi telepresence bot. Everyone wants to build and buy telepresence robots lately: semi-autonomous machines that allow remote workers and colleagues to chat face-to-face. DoubleRobotics has a sleek, […]
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Take a robot. Chop off its head, discard the body, give it an extra-long neck, and stick an iPad where its face was.

The inspiration for Kubi was simple: Seeing development teams simply duct-taping a tablet to a wall. After exploring various existing tablet stands, cofoundrs Marcus Rosenthal and Ilya Polyakov decided that they mostly “look right up your nose.”

“We started out designing one of those mobile bots — being robotics guys, we thought it was cool,” Rosenthal told me via (of course) Kubi. “But then we thought about it practically: Most of the time in your meeting, you’re not moving around, so you’ve paid for this roaming capability you’re not even using. The real need is just looking around the room.”

So Rosenthal and Polyakov designed Kubi, a telepresence bot that costs “from one-fifth to even one-hundredth the cost” of other bots. Kubi has a flexible, rotating neck on which you place the head: any recent Android or iOS tablet. And then you plant Kubi wherever you want it — on a conference table, at your desk, in reception — and carry it around if you want to have mobile conversations.

The result is surprisingly interactive.

Above: Marcus Rosenthal via Kubi.

Image Credit: John Koetsier

When I tried Kubi for the first time, I continued to have virtual meetings with Skype or Hangouts on my iPad Air. But I gave my colleagues and clients a web address where they could control what they see — a Kubi control page. By clicking around on the page, they effectively made my Kubi-app-equipped iPad control Kubi’s neck, enabling them to peer around my office, adjust the angle at which they were viewing me, or focus in on my computer screen.

And when I chatted with Polyakov and Rosenthal, I was able to focus on the speaker at any given moment. When they gave me a tour of their production facilities — a couple of desks at Lemnos Labs, a San Francisco-based hardware accelerator — I could spin their Kubi’s neck to take in the whole cluttered hardware hacker’s paradise.

“We target [small and medium-sized businesses],” Rosenthal says. “They want solutions for their four-to-10 person conference rooms and don’t have the budget for a video-conferencing solution that’s tens of thousands or more.”

In other words, they’re currently using laptops with built-in cameras. They could use a Suitable bot, but those start at around $16,000, although the company is apparently bringing out new options in the $2,000 range. Or they could use a Double from DoubleRobotics, which is also around the $2,000 range.

But, Polyakov says, not moving is a feature.

Above: Ilya Polyakov

Image Credit: John Koetsier

“The big thing that bothered us about telepresence was that it was unsuitable and unsafe at home, and in the office, it’s hard on WiFi,” Polyakov says. “Whenever Suitable does their demos at a tradeshow, they set up their own Wi-Fi infrastructure to ensure great reception … if there’s any latency, you’re going to drive into a wall.”

There’s no doubt that a remotely drivable robot for telepresence is cool. But it does come at a price — a much steeper price than the $500 Kubi. And I can see corporations such as Intel having second thoughts about a remote platform for viewing that could potentially be controlled — or even hacked — by anonymous outsiders. There are potential security implications.

The two founders have been smart not to try to create their own video platform. Kubi simply doesn’t care what videoconferencing solution you use: free or paid. They do have an upcoming integration with Blue Jeans Software, however, which makes using Kubi and controlling its view even simpler. With the new integration, viewers can change their perspective simply by clicking around in the video stream. Also coming: a built-in speaker for better volume in large conference rooms.

Not everything, of course, is simple.

Kubi started out in the $200 range, and now it’s $500. That’s partially due to high-quality injection molded parts and the current built-by-hand one at a time production process. Now, however, having shipped over 200 robots, the team is looking for high-speed contract manufacturers, as well as larger facilities for the team as they graduate from Lemnos Labs and move into their own facility next month.

]]>0This telepresence robot is missing legs and wheels — on purpose9 unusual, effective rules for successful meetingshttp://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/8-unusual-rules-for-meetings/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/8-unusual-rules-for-meetings/#commentsTue, 22 Jan 2013 22:31:25 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=608529Guest:I love Scott Kveton, the CEO of Urban Airship. He and his team are building an amazing company in Portland. If you do anything mobile-related and use push notifications of any sort, or real-time location targeting, you need to be talking to them. But even more impressive is how Scott leads his company. The other day, I got an […]
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The other day, I got an email from my partner Jason with a photo of the Urban Airship Meeting Rules posted on the wall. They are so logical as to be rules that should apply to every meeting at every startup from now until forever.

0. Do we really need to meet?

1. Schedule a start, not an end to your meeting – its over when its over, even if that’s just 5 minutes.

2. Be on time!

3. No multi-tasking … no device usage unless necessary for meeting

4. If you’re not getting anything out of the meeting, leave

5. Meetings are not for information sharing – that should be done before the meeting via email and/or agenda

6. Who really needs to be at this meeting?

7. Agree to action items, if any, at the conclusion of the meeting

8. Don’t feel bad about calling people out on any of the above; it’s the right thing to do.

I particularly love 0, 1, and 4. I rarely walk out of a meeting when I’m not getting anything out of it. I’m going to start paying more attention to this one.

]]>29 unusual, effective rules for successful meetingsCvent, the meetings-booking business you’ve never heard of, channels $3.4B in business in 2012 so farhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/07/23/cvent-the-meetings-booking-business-youve-never-heard-of-channels-3-4b-in-business-in-2012-so-far/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/23/cvent-the-meetings-booking-business-youve-never-heard-of-channels-3-4b-in-business-in-2012-so-far/#commentsMon, 23 Jul 2012 16:00:49 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=495461Continuing a stunning turn-around, event-booking company Cvent helped companies book $3.4 billion worth of meetings in the first six months of 2012. That’s up 50 percent from last year, and it represents 8,100 companies booking 47,000 meetings. The company still has room to grow: Its event-booking system includes more than 200,000 hotels and venues worldwide. I […]
]]>Continuing a stunning turn-around, event-booking company Cvent helped companies book $3.4 billion worth of meetings in the first six months of 2012.

That’s up 50 percent from last year, and it represents 8,100 companies booking 47,000 meetings. The company still has room to grow: Its event-booking system includes more than 200,000 hotels and venues worldwide.

I spoke with CEO Reggie Aggarwal in June just after the company’s Seed Labs acquisition, when he told me that Cvent was “the walking dead” from 2001 to 2005 after a high-flying dot-com bust. The company has battled hard since 2005, building itself into “the number one marketplace for group meetings.”

One of the company’s key competitive advantages is technology that helps both meeting planners and hotels quickly create and respond to requests for a quote. The goal: faster, frustration-free event selection.

Cvent vice president Bharet Malhotra says the company has “invested heavily in technology revisions and trained tens of thousands of hotel employees with a goal of making the request-for-proposal response process a very manageable process of responding in just minutes.”

In mid-2011, Cvent announced a monster $136 million round of funding that has helped the company expand quickly and make strategic acquisitions. At that time, an IPO was not on the table — at least not for another six months, Aggarwal said.

One has to wonder if now, with growth like this and press releases being sent out to ensure the world knows, Cvent is starting to think about going public.

With Palo Alto Network jumping 31 percent and Kayak seeing a nice bump on opening day as well, perhaps the time is getting to be right.

]]>0Cvent, the meetings-booking business you’ve never heard of, channels $3.4B in business in 2012 so farWhat not to do in an online meetinghttp://venturebeat.com/2012/06/25/what-not-to-do-in-an-online-meeting/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/25/what-not-to-do-in-an-online-meeting/#commentsMon, 25 Jun 2012 16:00:14 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=478870Sponsored:More and more technology is driving business. Whether it's the bring-your-own-device movement, cloud computing, or video conferencing, business is adapting and advancing as quickly as it can...
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This post is sponsored by Citrix GoToMeeting. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity.

More and more technology is driving business. Whether it’s the bring-your-own-device movement, cloud computing, or video conferencing, business is adapting and advancing as quickly as it can.

Video calling and teleconferencing are now so commonplace that actual travel for business is now just one of many options. However, much like social networking and using your smartphone, video conferencing comes with its own set of etiquette rules. Here are seven big Don’ts to avoid when dialing in.

DON’T be late

This is a central tenet for all meetings, really. However, online meetings have the added element of unpredictable technical problems that might pop up. You can compensate for any potential issues by logging in a few minutes ahead of time, which will also help keep the meeting starting and ending at its scheduled times.

DON’T be unprepared

Before you even get to the log-in point, some preparation is in order. Make sure you have any necessary directions for the meeting easily accessible to all participants. Likewise, any digital or physical documents should be ready at hand.

DON’T get off track

The best way to make sure that online meetings stay on track is to provide an agenda before the meeting begins, and to keep the agenda at hand in case the conversation starts to stray away from the planned topics. It’s also a great resource for anyone who arrives late to the meeting, or is accidentally disconnected.

DON’T multitask

Sure, it’s tempting to try to handle email or other tasks while the meeting is happening, but doing that means you’re not paying close attention to what’s actually happening in the meeting. That can lead to some awkward moments when you’re asked a question and have no idea what’s actually going on. Also, running multiple programs can cause your computer to run slowly or disconnect from the meeting. Additionally, and this should really go without saying, don’t eat during the meeting. No one wants to hear you munching away during a discussion of next quarter’s forecasts.

DON’T forget you’re in a professional meeting

Many online meetings are taken outside of a traditional meeting room, so participants often feel more casual about the process. However, make no mistake: This is a real meeting. It’s just taking place in a virtual environment. That means extending everyone in attendance the courtesies you would if you were meeting in person.

Mute your line when you’re not speaking so no ambient noise disrupts the call. Make sure your location is clean and presentable (if you’re video conferencing). And don’t interrupt others — aside from being plain rude, it also makes it difficult to understand what everyone is saying. It’s also a good practice to introduce all participants at the beginning of the meeting, and if there are a lot of attendees, to announce your name before you begin speaking.

DON’T reference unavailable materials

If some of the meeting’s participants are attending virtually and only have an audio connection, they may not be able to view the PowerPoint presentation you have up on the screen or the sales sheets you’re handing out. If you can’t make documentation available to everyone beforehand, make sure you’re explaining everything fully for those who may not have eyes on the situation. Don’t discuss documents or items they can’t see, unless related to the meeting, or hold side conversations about things that virtual attendees do not have access to.

DON’T forget to follow up

Once the meeting has adjourned, type up a quick follow-up document that covers what happened in the meeting, what will be happening next and who is responsible for what. Sending out notes from the session helps to minimize miscommunication and also provides actionable items (and time frames) so everyone who was in attendance understands what is expected of them.

]]>0What not to do in an online meetingHow to actually get things done in virtual meetingshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/06/16/how-to-actually-get-things-done-in-virtual-meetings/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/16/how-to-actually-get-things-done-in-virtual-meetings/#commentsSat, 16 Jun 2012 16:00:03 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=474334Guest:Forget the company conference room. Coworkers no longer need to be in the same office space — let alone the same time zone — to hold a productive progress reports or brainstorming session. We asked nine young entrepreneurs about how they conduct virtual meetings between their startup teams, and actually get things done while doing so. […]
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Forget the company conference room. Coworkers no longer need to be in the same office space — let alone the same time zone — to hold a productive progress reports or brainstorming session. We asked nine young entrepreneurs about how they conduct virtual meetings between their startup teams, and actually get things done while doing so. (Share your own thoughts in the comments.)

Stick to the agenda

Since it’s incredibly easy to get off task in a virtual meeting, it’s important to have an agenda, listing only a few goals of the meeting and complete with an overall time limit. Designate someone to lead the meeting and hold that person accountable for making sure everyone stays on topic to move the meeting along.

Start the meeting beforehand

Sending supporting information before the meeting can often help save you time in the meeting, since everyone is already briefed on the basics. If the meeting is just about making a decision, it can often be fast and productive.

Remember, the clock is ticking

For even more efficiency, put a time limit on each subject of the agenda and ruthlessly cut off rambling. Virtual teams are just as susceptible to unfocused meetings, so having an impartial, third-party reference makes it easier to transition topics and stay focused.

Try to shut up

I speak too much. One thing I am constantly trying to work on is asking better questions, and then just listening and letting my team interact. Virtual meetings can be productive if everyone comes together to express what is going well and what they need help on. Also, using the group to throw out potential solutions often reveals a great idea.

Follow up afterwards

Set a schedule of speakers

The main reason for meetings is to give different people a chance to speak. That means that you need to make sure that attendees know that they’re expected to do just that. When you’re planning out your agenda, assign a few speaking slots and make sure that your speakers know what they need to cover. Of course, you do want to have some unstructured time, but balance it out.

Peer pressure turns off multitasking

Without fail, people zone out on conference calls. Have your team use Google+ Hangouts (or another group video chat) so that everyone is actually “present.” Seeing everyone’s face will bring extra energy to the meeting and, of course, it will help you make sure that no one is on their phone or emailing so that you can get the most out of the important virtual chat.

Ask yourself, do we really need to have this meeting?

Your first question should always be: Do we need this meeting at all? If a meeting is not necessary because you have nothing substantial to discuss or you could accomplish your goals just as well through another faster method, cancel it.

Try weekly reports instead

I manage my virtual team by outlining and sharing the following week’s worth of tasks and projects on Sunday night. For the more urgent projects, I then require daily updates at the end of each day. For everything else, each team member must submit and share their progress at the end of the week. Then, it’s up to the team to analyze everyone else’s work and collaborate for the next week.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization composed of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment and provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth.

]]>0How to actually get things done in virtual meetings7 steps for an effective video-conferencing policyhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/02/28/7-steps-to-an-effective-video-conferencing-policy/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/28/7-steps-to-an-effective-video-conferencing-policy/#commentsTue, 28 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=395856Sponsored:Much like public speaking, the very idea of video conferencing can fill us with anxiety. Any number of things can go unexpectedly awry, leaving attendees dreading what should be a quick and easy experience.
]]>SPONSORED:

This post is sponsored by Citrix® GoToMeeting®. Attend your meetings from anywhere. Try GoToMeeting Today for Free. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity.

Much like public speaking, the very idea of video conferencing can fill us with anxiety. Any number of things can go unexpectedly awry, leaving attendees dreading what should be a quick and easy experience.

Video conferencing isn’t going away any time soon, especially with the popularity of video-enabled smartphones and tablets. Used in business, medicine, education, and media, video conferencing not only helps connect us to people around the world, it provides a green solution for interviewing long distance job candidates, conferencing with colleagues, or keeping tabs on a classroom.

Most woes about video conferencing can be solved with the simple edict of practice, practice, practice. Here are seven more tips to get your company happy and enthusiastic about video conferencing.

1. Know your system. This cannot be understated — there is nothing more frustrating, embarrassing or unprofessional than having to wait fourteen minutes to start a meeting because no one figured out they didn’t have the right cables to hook up the web cam. Have your system, whether it be a high-definition desktop application or a simple smartphone web chat, set up beforehand, and give it a test run at least 24 hours in advance. Know how your webcam works, what kind of login you need for the videoconferencing software, how loud the sound system is, and if your firewall or security software will conflict. Have this all settled in advance so you can jump right into it.

2. Test connections ahead of time. This is a bit of a reiteration of Know Your System, but it’s important enough to merit its own number. What kind of connections do you have available? 3G? Fiber Internet? Speed is important, but not nearly as important as having a connection that isn’t going to stall out on you. Astronauts in space are still using Windows XP because it’s a solid system they know won’t fail on them. Be like the astronauts and opt for a simpler, but more solid and dependable connection.

3. Look the part: Video conferencing can make anywhere part of the public arena, even the living room, so make it professional. Dress as you would were you in the office, clean up the background where your video conference will take place, and make sure there is sufficient lighting. Make sure you won’t be sitting too close, or too far away. Reduce background glare and, even more importantly, background distractions. Mute cellphones, turn off music, make sure your cats or kids won’t interrupt (just hand them an iPad). Likewise, if you’ll need to refer to documents or details during the meeting, have those open and ready to go when the conference begins.

4. Have a trial run. Heck, have three – the more you run through the process, the less nervous you’ll be when it’s actually go time. If you’ll have multiple employees appearing in video conferences, type up a few beginners tips to pass out, and include them in the trial run as well. If you’re using a system that requires participants to create a login or dial-in, skipping this step will guarantee confused emails the day of your meeting asking how to get on the call.

5. Pay attention. Give the video conference your full attention. That means no texting in your lap or opening up web browsers instead of looking at the meeting attendants. While you’re speaking, look into the web camera as though it were the eyes of the person you’re speaking to. When it’s not your turn to speak, look at the window that displays meeting attendees. It may help to email an outline to attendees beforehand in order to keep the conference on track — video conferencing is best when kept short and to the point anyhow.

6. Work around weaknesses. One of the biggest issues with video conferencing is the delay between participants replies; it is quite easy to cut off other speakers or have a jumbled discussion with everyone speaking at once, as there may be some delay between when someone starts speaking and when it reaches your screen. Allow time for replies and speak clearly. Also, be aware that even if you have a high-def solution set up, the person you’re video conferencing with may not. Some systems get grainy when they attempt to process quick movement (blame the slow refresh rate), so try not to fidget. If you’re using a smartphone or cellphone, find a sturdy stand to avoid shakiness.

7. Take advantage of strengths. Low refresh rates and poor sound quality aside, video conferences do allow you to share documents and information over the Internet, and have other added bonuses like recording. There are several pieces of software available that do this, and many conferencing clients will provide such a service if needed. Likewise, video conferencing has come a long way in the security realm. Users who need a more secure setting now have options such as meeting in a virtual room with a moderator, requiring PINs or moderator approval to join the discussion, and data encryption for information that is being shared during the conference.

]]>07 steps for an effective video-conferencing policyMicrosoft’s Code Space project combines Kinect, touchscreens for awesome meetingshttp://venturebeat.com/2011/11/15/microsoft-code-space-kinect/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/15/microsoft-code-space-kinect/#commentsTue, 15 Nov 2011 16:05:10 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=353083Microsoft Research is at it again: The wily folks who created Kinect, among other cool projects, have put together a project that could redefine the way we approach meetings. Dubbed Code Space, the project allows groups to collaborate using air and touch gestures with Kinect sensors and touchscreen devices, thereby “democratizing access, control, and sharing […]
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Microsoft Research is at it again: The wily folks who created Kinect, among other cool projects, have put together a project that could redefine the way we approach meetings.

Dubbed Code Space, the project allows groups to collaborate using air and touch gestures with Kinect sensors and touchscreen devices, thereby “democratizing access, control, and sharing of information across multiple personal devices and public displays.”

While still a very early concept, Code Space shows the potential uses for Kinect beyond gaming. With its motion tracking capabilities, the Kinect sensor could be the key that makes Minority Report-style computer interaction commonplace.

Why the need for so many input devices, when a simple whiteboard would do for most meetings? Code Space was created with developers in mind, so having a way to share information across devices could ultimately make meetings more efficient. For a simple PTA get-together, where there’s not much data to share, Code Space would likely be overkill.

The project’s design principles offers up some insight on what Microsoft Research hopes to accomplish. “Everyone can interact with the shared display, from anywhere in the meeting space, with any device they bring,” reads the first principle. That’s certainly a meeting I wouldn’t mind booking.

Noteleaf, a contact information aggregator for Google’s Gmail and Calendar apps, launched a number of new features for its text-messaging notification service today.

Noteleaf’s edge is that it doesn’t require a whole lot of extra work to use the contact information aggregator, co-founder Jake Klamka said. The online service automatically imports contact information about a name when a user types it into a Google Calendar entry. Noteleaf also sends a text message to the user with a link to relevant contact information 10 or 15 minutes before a meeting. That page pulls information from the contact’s LinkedIn profile.

The online service still requires users to sign up on the Noteleaf website. But after that, Noteleaf handles everything through Google’s oAuth application programming interface (API), which can access the user’s Google accounts. The company is also launching two new features for its program that come up on the text message profile page today. The profile page will show mutual LinkedIn connections as well as the three most recent tweets from the contact.

Noteleaf works in the background after a user signs up by using information stored in Google’s Gmail email service. Noteleaf browses the user’s Gmail and contact accounts for additional information about names typed into a Google Calendar entry. While it doesn’t work with Microsoft’s Exchange email and contact storage program, that might be coming in the future if Noteleaf is successful, Klamka said.

While Noteleaf is free for now, and will remain free for the foreseeable future, there are a number of ways that it could make money, Klamka said. That includes starting with a freemium-style model that has become popular among enterprise 2.0 applications like Yammer, an enterprise-style social network, and Huddle, an online collaboration network. The most realistic revenue model is a monthly subscription for premium features, Klamka said.

Klamka and Wil Chung, Noteleaf’s other co-founder, have been working on the service since December and launched the service officially two weeks ago. The company launched as part of startup-incubator Y Combinator’s Winter 2011 class.

Calling all mobile executives: This April 25-26, VentureBeat is hosting its inaugural VentureBeat Mobile Summit, where we’ll debate the five key business and policy challenges facing the mobile industry today. Participants will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. The invitation-only event, located at the scenic and relaxing Cavallo Point Resort in Sausalito, Calif., is limited to the top 180 mobile executives, investors and policymakers. Request an invitation.